Real advice from real people

“I don’t know if I should talk to him about his alcoholism”

I’ve been talking to this guy for a couple of months now. We’re pretty close and both of us have made it clear that we have feelings for each other. It just so happened that in the beginning of us getting to know each other, he had a sort-of/kind-of girlfriend (basically she really liked him and he felt obligated to stay with her and it was super weird.)

They recently ended things and we’ve gotten much closer. While we’re still friends we talk about dating a lot. Well, while at a Basketball tournament, he was caught with a group of our mutual friends drinking in their hotel room and he apparently was the one who somehow got a hold of the beer. He was asked to leave the tournament early and his mom had to drive four hours there and back to get him. (I only know because one of my best friends’ mom told me, not knowing that me and this guy are really close.)
We had talked about his struggles with alcohol early in our relationship and he was very open in how it took him a lot of time to overcome his dependency for it. This was probably the first time in a long time that he has drank alcohol. He worked really hard to stop drinking to the point of ending relationships. He no longer spent time with some of his teammates because he knew he’d be in close proximity to alcohol.

I don’t know if I should talk to him about it so that he knows that I would never judge him or if I should just leave it alone. I know that he is probably really embarrassed and doesn’t want me to know, but I’m not sure if I should reassure him and be his friend in this time or pretend like I don’t know. This also probably has to do with the fact that I want to talk to him/be with him while we’re away from school. I just know that this break will be really hard for him and I want to be there for him, but not in a way that will make him feel ashamed. I don’t know what to do.